Authors: C. K. Williams
Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right,
are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.
Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,
but toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.
2.
In this tale of lies, of treachery, of superfluous dead,
were there ever so many who were right and disdained?
With no notion what to do next? If we were true seers,
as prescient as she, as frenzied, we’d know what to do next.
We’d twitter, as she did, like birds; we’d warble, we’d trill.
But what would it be really, to
twitter,
to
warble,
to
trill?
Is it
ee-ee-ee,
like having a child? Is it
uh-uh-uh,
like a wound?
Or is it inside, like a blow, silent to everyone but yourself?
3.
Yes, inside, I remember,
oh-oh-oh:
it’s where grief
is just about to be spoken, but all at once can’t be:
oh.
When you no longer can “think” of what things like lies,
like superfluous dead, so many, might mean:
oh.
Cassandra will be abducted at the end of her tale, and die.
Even she can’t predict how. Stabbed? Shot? Blown to bits?
Her abductor dies, too, though, in a gush of gore, in a net.
That we know; she foresaw that — in a gush of gore, in a net.
Ponies
When the ponies are let out at dusk, they pound across their pasture,
pitching and bucking like the brutes their genes must dream they still are.
With their shaggy, winter-coarse coats, they seem stubbier than ever,
more diminutive, toy-like, but then they begin their aggression rituals,
ears flattened, stained brown teeth bared, hindquarters humped,
and they’re savage again, cruel, all but carnivorous if they could be.
Their shoes have been pulled off for the season, their halters are rope,
so they move without sound, as though on tiptoe, through the rising mist.
They drift apart now, halfheartedly nosing the stiff, sapless remnants
of field hay — sometimes one will lift and gaze back towards the barn.
A tiny stallion lies down, rolling onto his back first, then all the way flat.
A snort, rich, explosive, an answering sigh: silence again, shadows, dark.
INDEX OF TITLES
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
Index of Titles
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Acids
After Auschwitz
After That
Again
Allies: According to Herodotus
Alzheimer’s: The Husband
Alzheimer’s: The Wife
Anger
Another Dollar
Archetypes
Artemis
Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down
Baby Talk
Bad Mouth
Becoming Somebody Else
Bed, The
Before This
Beginning of April, The
Being Alone
Beyond
Bialystok, or Lvov
Biopsy
Bishop Tutu’s Visit to the White House: 1984
Blackbird
Blade, The
Blades
Blame
Blow, The
Bob
Body, The
Bone
Bread
Bringing It Home
Call, The
Canal
Carpe Diem
Cassandra, Iraq
Cautionary, The
Cave
Cave, The
Cellophane
Chaos
Chapter Eleven
Charge, The
Child Psychology
City in the Hills, The
Clause, The
Clay out of Silence
Color of Time, The
Coma, The
Combat
Como
Conscience
Covenant, The
Cowboys
Cows
Crime
Crime, The
Critic, The
Cup, The
Dance, The
Dawn
Dawn (Symbols)
Day for Anne Frank, A
Demagogue, The
Depths
Dignity
Dimensions
Dirt
Dirty Talker: D Line, Boston, The
Dissections
Doe, The
Dog
Dog, The
Dominion: Depression
Don’t
Doves
Downwards
Dream
Dream, The
Dress, The
Droplets
Drought
Easter
Eight Months
Elegy for an Artist
Elms
End of Drought
Ethics
Even If I Could
Even So
Experience
Exterior: Day
Failure
Faint Praise
Fame
Fast Food
Fat
Fear
Fear, The
Fifteen
Fire
Fire (1987)
Fire (Symbols)
First Desires
Fish
Flamenco
Flat
Flight
Floor
For Gail, When I Was Five
Fountain, The
Fragment
Friends
Frog
From My Window
From Now On
From the Next Book by (…)
Future, The
Gaffe, The
Game, The
Gap, The
Garden
Gardens
Gas
Gas Station, The
Gift, The
Girl Meets Boy
Giving It Up
Glass
Good Mother: Home
Good Mother: Out
Good Mother: The Bus
Good Mother: The Car
Good Mother: The Métro
Good Mother: The Plane
Good Mother: The Street
Grace
Gratitude
Gravel
Greed
Grief
Guatemala: 1964
Guitar
Halves
Hard Part, The
Harm
Hawk
Heart, The
Hearth, The
Helen
Herakles
Hercules, Deianira, Nessus
History
Hog Heaven
Hood
Hooks
Hounding Mercy
House
Hovel, The
I Am the Bitter Name
Ice (1987)
Ice (1999)
Idyll, The
Image, The
Inches
Inculcations
In Darkness
Innings
Insight
Instinct
Insult, The
Interrogation II
In the Forest
In the Heart of the Beast
In There
Invisible Mending
Island, The
It Is Teeming
It Is This Way with Men
Jews
Junior High School Concert: Salle Rossini
Just Right
Keep It
Kin
King
Knot, The
Ladder, The
Last, The
Last Deaths, The
Last Things
Latin Quarter, The
Leaves
Lens, The
Lessons
Lie, The
Light
Little Shirt, The
Loneliness, The
Long Naked Walk of the Dead, The
Loss
Lost Wax
Love: Beginnings
Love: Habit
Love: Intimacy
Love: Loss
Love: Petulance
Love: Shyness
Love: Sight
Love: The Dance
Love: Wrath
Love: Youth
Lover, The (1987)
Lover, The (1997)
Low Relief
Madder
Man Who Owns Sleep, The
Marina
Marriage, The
Matter, The
Meditation
Medusa
Men
Method, The
Midas
Miniature Poodle
Mirror, The
Mistress, The
Modern, The
Money
Mornings: Catherine
My Book, My Book
My Fly
My Mother’s Lips
Nail, The
Naked
Narcissism
Native Americans
Near the Haunted Castle
Neglect
Neighbor, The
New Car
Next to the Last Poem about God, The
Nickname of Hell, The
Night
Noise: Sinalunga
Normality
Nostalgia
Not Soul
Nut, The
Of Childhood the Dark
Of What Is Past
Oh
Old Man
One Morning in Brooklyn
One of the Muses
On Learning of a Friend’s Illness
On the Métro
On the Other Hand
On the Roof
Orchid, The
Other Side, The
Owen: Seven Days
Owl
Park, The
Past, The
Patience Is When You Stop Waiting
Peace
Peggy
Penance
Petit Salvié, Le
Philadelphia: 1978
Pillow Talk
Plums
Poem for the Governments, A
Poet, The
Politics
Ponies
Poor Hope
Pregnant
Prisoners
Prodigy, The
Proof
Question, The
Rabbit Fights for His Life The Leopard Eats Lunch, The
Race of the Flood, The
Racists
Rampage, The
Rats
Reading: Early Sorrow
Reading: The Bus
Reading: The Cop
Reading: The Gym
Reading: The Subway
Reading: Winter
Realms
Refuge, Serpent-Riders
Regret
Regulars, The
Religious Thought
Repression
Resentment
Ribbons
Risk
Room
Rungs
Rush Hour
Saddening
Saint Sex
Sanctity, The
Scale: I
Scale: II
Scar
Second Persons: Café de L’Abbaye
Secrets
Self-Knowledge
Self-Portrait with Rembrandt Self-Portrait
Shade, The
Shadows
Shame
She, Though
Shells (1969)
Shells (1992)
Shock
Shoe
Shrapnel
Signs
Silence, The
Singing, The
Sixteen: Tuscany
Sky, Water
Sleeping Over
Snow: I
Snow: II
Solid, The
Soliloquies
Some of Us
Song
Soon
Sorrow, The
Souls
Space
Spider Psyche
Spirit the Triumph, The
Spit
Star, The
Still Life
Sting, The
Stone
Storm
Storm, The
Suicide: Anne
Suicide: Elena
Suicide: Ludie
Sully: Sixteen Months
Swifts
Symbols
Tails
Tantrum
Tar
Telephone, The
Ten Below
Tender
Then the Brother of the Wind
They Warned Him Then They Threw Him Away
Thinking Thought
Thirst
This Day
This Happened
This Is a Sin
Thrush
Time: 1972
Time: 1975
Time: 1976
Time: 1978
Toil
To Listen
To Market
Tract, The
Train, The
Trappers
Trash
Travelers
Tree
Twins
Two: Resurrections
Undead, The
USOCA
Vehicle: Absence
Vehicle: Circles
Vehicle: Conscience
Vehicle: Forgetting
Vehicle: Indolence
Vehicle: Insecurity
Vehicle: Violence
Vessel, The
Villanelle of the Suicide’s Mother
Vocations
Waking Jed
War (1987)
War (2003)
Wasp
We
What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?
What Is and Is Not
When
Widower, The
Wig
Will
Wind
With Ignorance
Wood
Work
World, The
World’s Greatest Tricycle-Rider, The
You
Yours
Index of First Lines
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
a baby got here once who before
A basset hound with balls
A child’s cry out in the street, not of pain or fear
A city square, paths empty, sky clear; after days of rain, a purified sunlight
Across the way hands
A dense, low, irregular overcast is flowing rapidly in over the city from
A dirty picture, a photograph, possibly a tintype, from the turn of the cen-
A dream of method first in which mind is malleable, its products as
A few nights ago I was half-watching the news on television and half-
After a string of failed romances and intensely remarked sexual adven-
After the argument — argument? battle, war, harrowing; you need shrieks
After the drink, after dinner, after the half-hour idiot kids’ cartoon special
After this much time, it’s still impossible. The SS man with his stiff hair
Again and again. Again lips, again breast, again hand, thigh, loin and
A garden I usually never would visit; oaks, roses, the scent of roses I usu-
A girl who, in 1971, when I was living by myself, painfully lonely, bereft
All along certainly it’s been there, waiting before us, waiting to receive
All morning the tree men have been taking down the stricken elms
All night, snow, then, near dawn, freezing rain, so that by morning the
All the beautiful poems
All the Greek restaurants in the old student neighborhood have pigs
All under the supposition that he’s helping her because she’s so often
All we do — how old are we? I must be twelve, she a little older; thirteen
Almost as good as her passion, I’ll think, almost as good as her presence
Alone after the news on a bitter
Although constructed of the most up-to-date, technically advanced ele-